Wars And Rumors Of Wars

[Shammu]

Arab state tells Israel it won't oppose Iran strike
By Yoav Stern, Mazal Mualem and Barak Ravid
Tags: Iran, Israel, Arab state

Official representatives of an Arab country have hinted in meetings with Israeli officials that they would not oppose an Israeli military operation against Iran, sources in Jerusalem said this week.

According to the sources, the representatives of the Arab country said they are worried by Iran's growing influence in the region, primarily among Shi'ite communities in Arab states.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak hinted Thursday that Israel would be willing to attack Iran when he said that "Israel is the strongest country in the region and has proved in the past that it is not deterred from activity when there is concern that its vital interests could be harmed."

The representatives told the Israeli officials that other Arab countries are also troubled by Iran's policy. Some Arab states are afraid that Iran's growing power will create a rift between Sunnis and Shi'ites. That concern is especially rife in Arab countries with a Shi'ite minority.

Political sources in Israel told Haaretz that Iran's increasingly belligerent statements have worried the Gulf states, which want American protection against Tehran. "If this is how Iran threatens when it doesn't have nuclear weapons, what will it do when its nuclear program ripens?" one Israeli source said.

Addressing the Iranian issue during a Labor Party meeting in Tel Aviv on Thursday, Barak said that "at the moment the focus is on international sanctions and intensive diplomatic activity, and these channels have to be exhausted."

Arab state tells Israel it won't oppose Iran strike

[Shammu]

Arabs fear fallout of nuclear conflict

Nervous Arab states fear a war in the Gulf but a nuclear-armed Iran is an even greater concern
Ian Black, Middle East editor
Thursday July 10, 2008

Arab governments are deeply worried about the prospect of war between Iran and Israel and/or the US for the very good reason that several of them would be directly in the firing line if hostilities erupted. Any fallout could have devastating consequences.

Iranian retaliation against oilfields, refineries and desalination plants in the Gulf, especially in eastern Saudi Arabia, is an obvious worry. Tehran has gone on the record as threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz, the choke point for 40% of globally-traded oil, if it is attacked. Washington quickly insisted that it will not let that happen.

As the sabres rattled this week, Iran warned that it would strike at Tel Aviv and the US navy, though Revolutionary Guard Shehab missiles would find it difficult to distinguish between American and Arab targets: the US Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain; US Central Command in nearby Qatar and the US navy has long relied on docking facilities at Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates.

Even without the threat of war, Iran's Arab neighbours have long lived in fear of another Chernobyl: the Bushehr nuclear reactor, two miles from the Gulf coast, is closer to six Arab capitals (Kuwait, Riyadh, Manama, Doha, Abu Dhabi and Muscat) than it is to Tehran. Any nuclear accident would be an ecological disaster.

But the recent sniping has been ominous. "We are sandwiched between Iran on the one hand and Israel and the US on the other," said Mustafa Alani of the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai. "We feel that we are going to be victims."

Abdullah Alshayji, a Kuwaiti analyst, agrees, describing the Gulf states as "feeling like helpless bystanders with little room to manoeuvre". War would be "a nightmare of epic proportions for the whole region," he said.

And Tehran is mistrusted in almost every Arab capital. None believe the insistent claim that it is interested only in civilian nuclear power and has no military ambitions. It is seen as working to establish its hegemony across the Middle East, setting the agenda through allies or "non-state" proxies such as Hizbullah and Hamas, confounding the US and Israel in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.

Syria, Iran's only Arab ally, is the glaring exception, maintaining a strategic relationship that dates back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Maverick Qatar, home to al-Jazeera as well as a huge US air base, has been careful to stay on good terms with Tehran, not least because of massive joint natural gas projects. Otherwise Arab states are united in their suspicion of the country they fervently hoped to see defeated by Saddam Hussein in his eight-year struggle against Ayatollah Khomeini. Historic Arab antipathy to Persians still runs very deep. And vice versa.

The sight of long-range Iranian missiles being launched into desert skies was a grim reminder of that war against Saddam. But Arabs already see Iran as the main beneficiary of the more recent conflict in Iraq, with the Sunnis defeated and marginalised by the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad — even if there are now signs of grudging acceptance that it is there to stay.

Public statements by Arab leaders make clear that they oppose military action by Israel or the United States. The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council has declared that it would not allow its territory to be used to attack Iran — and even hosted Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at its summit late last year.

Saudi Arabia, where some military men are said to be privately advocating a hardline stance towards Iran, has chosen the path of accommodation rather than confrontation. King Abdullah made a symbolic public declaration of this policy last year when he invited Ahmadinejad to go on the ubgone86 pilgrimage to Mecca.

Bahrain, just a few miles across the Gulf from Iran, has anxieties over so-called Iranian "sleeper cells" amongst its restive Shias - the majority of the population in the Sunni-ruled kingdom. But it too favours engagement and diplomacy — and worries about conflict. The same is true of Kuwait, at the head of the Gulf.

Further afield, Jordan's King Abdullah, who coined the phrase "Shia crescent" to describe the alarming spread of Sunni-Shia sectarianism, warned recently that action against Iran would open a "Pandora's box". His recommendation: "Engage with the Iranians. A military strike in Iran will only solicit a reaction from Iran and Iranian proxies, and I don't think that we can live with any more conflicts in this part of the world."

Privately, things may be different: "If we have to choose between Iranian nuclear deterrence and intimidation, or accept military action as a solution, we'll accept military action," says Alani. "We in the Gulf can live with Iranian retaliation for a week or a month. That's manageable compared to the possibility that Iran will be a nuclear power."

Israel, waging an intensifying propaganda campaign over Iran - and seeking to coax Syria away from its alliance with Tehran - likes to claim that "moderate" Arab states would support an attack on Iran's nuclear installations, though passive acquiescence is not the same as active support.

"We would not be participants," Alani says of the Gulf states. "We would be beneficiaries. But no one will say this in public. We don't want premature confrontation because we still believe there is a margin for a diplomatic solution."

Still, there is no mistaking the anxiety in the region. "Perhaps the objective of Iran's frequent threats is to stir up fear amongst the Gulf states over the repercussions of any US strike against it so that they it turn may pressure Washington into preventing any military action," observed Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed in the Saudi-owned al-Sharq al-Awsat. "But this is having an opposite effect from the desired one."

Arabs fear fallout of nuclear conflict

[Shammu]

'Peace partner' officially rejects truce with Israel
While Hamas terrorists use time-out to rearm, produce advanced rockets
Posted: July 11, 2008
12:00 am Eastern

By Aaron Klein
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

JAFFA, Israel – The military wing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization yesterday officially announced it is no longer party to a three-week truce forged in Gaza between Hamas and Israel.

The Hamas terror group continues to abide by the cease-fire, while Fatah took credit for launching three rockets from Gaza yesterday aimed at Jewish civilian population centers.

U.S. and Israeli policies consider Abbas to be "moderate" and those two nations have been negotiating with him in line with talks started at last November's U.S.-sponsored Annapolis Summit, which seeks to create a Palestinian state by the end of the year.

A pamphlet released yesterday by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and obtained by WND calls the Gaza truce "illogical."

"The cease-fire is gone and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades will make the enemy pay a high price for its crimes against the truce Hamas gave for free to the enemy. We emphasize our right to act at any time and place of our choosing," reads the pamphlet.

The statement, signed by the Brigades "in the name of Allah," accuses Israel of "assassinating" one of the terror group's "most remarkable leaders, Talal Abed."

Abed was killed on Wednesday when he resisted arrest and opened fire during an Israeli anti-terror operation. The Israeli Defense Forces said Abed was planning an imminent suicide bombing inside Israel.

The IDF claimed Abed was a Hamas member and was planning attacks on behalf of Hamas, even though WND pointed out Abed is a well-known Fatah leader and Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades itself announced Abed was working on its behalf.

Since the cease-fire was signed last month, Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have fired more than a dozen rockets and mortars into Israel.

Officially, Fatah and the PA – headed by Abbas – endorse the Gaza truce agreement. But unofficially, the PA has been expressing to Israeli and American diplomats its strong opposition to the truce, explaining the cease-fire puts Hamas in a more powerful position.

WND last month quoted a top PA official complaining the truce between Hamas and Israel enhances the position of Hamas and amounts to the Jewish state's tacit recognition of the terrorist group's control of the Gaza Strip.

The PA official's main complaint was not that Israel was negotiating with a terror group but that the Jewish state, he argued, was enhancing Hamas at the expense of the PA.

The official said the PA took particular offense at talk of eventually expanding the truce to the West Bank, which until now has been considered the territory of Abbas' Fatah organization.

He said if Hamas was seen as the main power broker in the West Bank, it would be a "disaster" for Fatah and the PA.

Hamas for its part is taking full advantage of the truce.

A mysterious explosion at a Hamas training facility in the Gaza Strip earlier this week occurred while terrorists were attempting to produce rockets that can hit further inside Israel, Hamas sources told WND.

The explosion underscores the Gaza-based terrorists' utilization of the cease-fire to rearm, train and produce advance weaponry for use against Israel.

"It is not really a period of rest. We have been training, receiving religious courses ... we've been producing weapons, working on smuggling everything that can reinforce us," said a senior terrorist in Gaza, speaking on condition his name be withheld.

"This period will make that our capacities will be much stronger than before the truce," the senior terrorist said.

[Shammu]

Iraq denies IAF using its airspace
Jul. 11, 2008
THE JERUSALEM POST

Iraq denied on Friday reports claiming the Israeli Air Force has been practicing for a possible attack against Iran in its airspace.

"As the Ministry of Defense, we haven't observed any IAF warplanes practicing in Iraqi airspace," said Major-General Mohammad al-Askari, spokesman for the Iraqi Defense Ministry.

On Friday, sources in the Iraqi Defense Ministry told a local news network that Israel Air Force (IAF) war planes are practicing in Iraqi airspace and land on US airbases in the country as a preparation for a potential strike on Iran.

The IDF has also denied the reports, calling them "baseless."

The report, which was also carried by Iranian news outlets, claimed that recently massive IAF overnight presence was detected in several American held airbases.

According to the sources, former military officers in the Anbar province said IAF jets arrive during the night from Jordanian airspace, enter Iraq's airspace and land on a runway near the city of Hadita. The sources estimated the jets were practicing for a raid on Iran's nuclear sites.

The sources also said the American bases in Iraq might serve as a platform for the IAF from which to attack Iran. If Israeli warplanes will take off from Iraq, they can reach Bushehr in five minutes - a "record time," the sources said.

Iraq denies IAF using its airspace

[Shammu]

IDF prepares as truce 'could end soon'
Jul. 9, 2008
Yaakov Katz and AP , THE JERUSALEM POST

Following a week of near-daily Palestinian violations of the Israeli-Hamas cease-fire, senior defense officials said Thursday that the truce could be in its final stages and that as a result the IDF was preparing for possible future incursions into the Gaza Strip.

"It is not clear how much longer the cease-fire will last and we need to be prepared for an operation in Gaza," a senior defense official told The Jerusalem Post shortly after two Kassam rockets struck the western Negev Thursday afternoon.

Both rockets both hit in open areas, causing no casualties or damage. A faction of Fatah's Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

On Thursday evening Hamas said it had arrested the two men who had fired the rockets, according to an official from the Fatah-affiliated Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades. Reuters quoted the official as saying that Hamas's security forces had detained two of its members who were part of a Kassam launching squad.

"They chased the two after they fired the rockets and captured them," he said.

A senior Hamas leader confirmed on Thursday that his group will hold to the cease-fire and stop violators.

The remarks by Moussa Abu Marzouk came after two days of talks with Egypt's chief of intelligence, Omar Suleiman, who is the main mediator in the fragile truce that started June 19.

In a statement before returning to Syria, Abu Marzouk called for "solidifying" the truce, saying it was in the Palestinians' interest.

He also promised that his group, which controls the Gaza Strip, will stop violators who have been firing rockets into southern Israel.

Al-Aksa had said earlier that an 18-year-old Palestinian who was shot and killed by IDF troops Thursday morning, after crossing the Gaza fence into Israel, belonged to its ranks.

The troops called on the youth to stop and after he tried to flee, they opened fire fearing a terror infiltration. An inspection of his body revealed that he was unarmed. It was the first death on either side since the Egyptian-mediated cease-fire went into effect on June 19.

"We will not let this crime pass silently," the group had said in a text message to reporters. It did not say what the young man was doing along the border.

Hamas said it considered the predawn shooting of the 18-year-old a violation of the truce.

"The Palestinian factions show a great commitment to making this understanding successful, but the occupation must also be committed to their obligations," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.

Late Wednesday night, a Palestinian gunmen affiliated with Fatah was killed during an arrest raid in Jenin.

Also Thursday, eight Palestinians from the Isawiya in southeast Jerusalem were arrested on suspicion of throwing Molotov cocktails at cars on the road to Ma'aleh Adumim and near the Mount Scopus campus of the capital's Hebrew University, authorities announced Thursday. The eight were members of a cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

In other violence, a border policeman was lightly wounded by a rock thrown by anti-security barrier demonstrators in the West Bank town of Na'alin, north of Modi'in.

Hundreds of Palestinians and Israeli protesters clashed with police and several of the demonstrators were also reportedly hurt.

The army said they were demonstrating in a closed military zone and that security forces were trying to disperse them using crowd control measures.

Dozens of IDF jeeps and trucks entered Nablus before dawn Thursday, and soldiers raided a medical clinic, confiscating computers and documents, witnesses said. Some of the offices were ordered closed, and soldiers also confiscated five schoolbuses, they said.

The IDF confirmed an operation against Hamas in Nablus, but offered no details.

Palestinian Authority Interior Minister Abdel Razek Yehiyeh said the Israeli raids were undermining the Palestinian government's efforts to establish law and order in the West Bank. "We condemn these practices and see them as sabotaging our security achievements," he told a news conference in Ramallah.

IDF prepares as truce 'could end soon'

[HisDaughter]

Congress warned: U.S. risks 'catastrophe' in EMP attack

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=69280


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A top scientist today warned the House Armed Services Committee America remains vulnerable to a "catastrophe" from a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack that could be launched with plausible deniability by hostile rogue nations or terrorists.

William R. Graham, chairman of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack and the former national science adviser to President Reagan, testified before the committee while presenting a sobering new report on "one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences."

It is the first report from the commission since 2004 and identifies vulnerabilities in the nation's critical infrastructures, "which are essential to both our civilian and military capabilities."

Not taking the steps necessary to reduce the threat in the next three to five years "can both invite and reward attack," Graham told the committee.

The scariest and most threatening kind of EMP attack is initiated by the detonation of a nuclear weapon at high altitude in the range of 25 to 250 miles above the Earth's surface. The immediate effects of EMP are disruption of, and damage to, electronic systems and electrical infrastructure. Such a detonation over the middle of the continental U.S. "has the capability to produce significant damage to critical infrastructures that support the fabric of U.S. society and the ability of the United States and Western nations to project influence and military power," said Graham.

"Several potential adversaries have the capability to attack the United States with a high-altitude nuclear weapon-generated electromagnetic pulse, and others appear to be pursuing efforts to obtain that capability," said Graham. "A determined adversary can achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of sophistication. For example, an adversary would not have to have long-range ballistic missiles to conduct an EMP attack against the United States. Such an attack could be launched from a freighter off the U.S. coast using a short- or medium-range missile to loft a nuclear warhead to high altitude. Terrorists sponsored by a rogue state could attempt to execute such an attack without revealing the identity of the perpetrators. Iran, the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism, has practiced launching a mobile ballistic missile from a vessel in the Caspian Sea. Iran has also tested high-altitude explosions of the Shahab-III, a test mode consistent with EMP attack, and described the tests as successful. Iranian military writings explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States. While the commission does not know the intention of Iran in conducting these activities, we are disturbed by the capability that emerges when we connect the dots."

Graham reminded the committee even smaller nuclear weapons can create massive EMP effects over wide geographic areas. He also pointed out that United Nations investigators recently found that "the design for an advanced nuclear weapon, miniaturized to fit on ballistic missiles currently in the inventory of Iran, North Korea and other potentially hostile states, was in the possession of Swiss criminals affiliated with the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network."

Theoretically, an EMP attack is devastating because of the unprecedented cascading failures of major infrastructures that could result. Because of America's heavy reliance on electricity and electronics, the impact would be far worse than on a country less advanced technologically. Graham and the commission see the potential for failure in the financial system, the system of distribution for food and water, medical care and trade and production.

"The recovery of any one of the key national infrastructures is dependent upon the recovery of others," he said. "The longer the outage, the more problematic and uncertain the recovery will be. It is possible for the functional outages to become mutually reinforcing until at some point the degradation of infrastructure could have irreversible effects on the country's ability to support its population."

Graham took the EMP debate out of the realm of science fiction by reminding the committee that as recently as May 1999, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Russian leaders threatened a U.S. congressional delegation with the specter of such an attack that would paralyze the U.S.

He also quoted James J. Shinn, assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Security, who two weeks ago told the same House committee that China's arms buildup includes exotic experiments with electromagnetic weapons that can devastate electronics with bursts of energy similar to those produced by a nuclear blast.

"The consequence of EMP is that you destroy the communications network," Shinn said. "And we are, as you know, and as the Chinese know, heavily dependent on sophisticated communications, satellite communications, in the conduct of our forces. And so, whether it's from an EMP or it's some kind of a coordinated [anti-satellite] effort, we could be in a very bad place if the Chinese enhanced their capability in this area."

Graham says terrorists who get their hands on one or a few unsophisticated nuclear weapons might well calculate they could get the most bang for their buck from attempting an EMP attack.

Recovery from a widespread EMP attack could take months or years, Graham warned. The fact that key components of the U.S. electrical grid are not even manufactured in America and must be ordered a year in advance from foreign suppliers suggests just how complicated and time-consuming recovery might be. The high state of automation within America's utilities further complicates recovery. There just might not be sufficient trained manpower available to get the job done in a timely way.

"The commission's view is that the federal government does not today have sufficient human and physical assets for reliably assessing and managing EMP threats," said Graham. "The commission reviewed current national capabilities to understand and to manage the effects of EMP and concluded that the U.S. is rapidly losing the technical competence and facilities that it needs in the government, the national laboratories and the industrial community."

Graham said it's not too late for Congress to take the bull by the horns and take the steps necessary to prepare for the threat – and thereby reduce it.

"A serious national commitment to address the threat of an EMP attack can lead to a national posture that would significantly reduce the payoff for such an attack and allow the United States to recover from EMP, and from other threats, man-made and natural, to the critical infrastructures," said Graham.

Graham's predecessor as chairman of the commission had equally tough words on the impact of the EMP threat.

"Their effects on systems and infrastructures dependent on electricity and electronics could be sufficiently ruinous as to qualify as catastrophic to the nation," Lowell Wood, acting chairman of the commission, told members of Congress in 2005.

The commission's previous report went so far as to suggest, in its opening sentence, that an EMP attack "might result in the defeat of our military forces."

[HisDaughter]

The weapons of World War III

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=69079


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Did the Chinese military cause the largest blackout in the history of North America?

That is the assertion of Tim Bennett, the former president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, who says U.S. intelligence officials confirmed to him the People's Liberation Army gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern U.S. in 2003, according to a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

Some 50 million people were affected by the 9,300-square-mile blackout that hit parts of New York, Canada, Michigan and Ohio.

The official explanation for the power outage was that overgrown trees came into contact with strained high-voltage lines in Ohio. But the story of this possible skirmish in the "electromagnetic spectrum" is widely whispered about in defense and intelligence circles. It is referred to by some as the first battle of World War III – a conflict to be fought asymmetrically in cyberspace and with weapons that might seem like science fiction.

The Moscow newspaper Zavtra reported only a week ago that Russia has developed "special powerful electromagnetic impulse generators that may be used in design of new type radars and as a basis of electromagnetic weapons that will render enemy electronics inoperable."

"The U.S. Army is convinced meanwhile that the Russians have already designed 'kinetic weapons' and 'directed energy weapons' (apparently lasers) for ASAT warfare," the article continued. "In any event, the Americans suspect that the recent episode with the Chinese laser that damaged an American spysat became possible precisely because Moscow had made this technology available to China."

The superweapons being developed for the next global conflict began coming into sharper focus last winter when China destroyed one of its own aging, low-Earth-orbit weather satellites while it was circling at an altitude of 500 miles, using a ground-based, direct ascent anti-satellite weapon.

This year, the U.S., using its sea-based Aegis missile defense system, shot down a disabled American intelligence satellite at 100 or so miles altitude as it tumbled uncontrollably toward the planet.

The Defense Department says China is developing non-kinetic means of attacking satellites, such as jamming and blinding, and using lasers, microwave, particle beam and electromagnetic pulse weapons.

Cyber-warfare, one of the proven strengths of the Chinese military, can also be used as an anti-satellite capability. In congressional testimony this year, the director of national intelligence stated, "Counter-command, control and sensor systems, to include communications satellite jammers and ASAT weapons, are among Beijing's highest military priorities."

Bennett, meanwhile, told the National Journal he believes Chinese cyber-hackers were also responsible for another U.S. blackout last February in Florida – one that affected 3 million customers.

Bennett told the National Journal he decided to speak publicly about the incidents to point out that security for the nation's critical electronic infrastructures is weak and to emphasize that government and company officials haven't sufficiently acknowledged these vulnerabilities.

[Soldier4Christ]

We are entering an era where the weaponry will be unlike any other war known to mankind. Much of it is unknown to the public. EMP weaponry can be rendered ineffective if proper safeguards are taken. All it requires are certain types of electronic shields. Government equipment already has these safeguards installed. It was started many years ago when the threat from nuclear weapons for EMP was first realized. That is old news that is new world wide. The problem is with electronics in the civilian market. The majority of them have no safeguards and that very well could include the electric supply grid. Even though this sounds like another conspiracy theory it is one that is quite feasible.

[Soldier4Christ]

Whistling Past the Graveyard     
By John Perazzo

Last week, columnist Paul Weyrich reported that there is credible evidence that Osama bin Laden has acquired twenty suitcase-sized nuclear bombs from Chechen rebels in the former Soviet Union and smuggled them into the United States by way of the Mexican border. If that is true, the al Qaeda kingpin has laid the groundwork for an “American Hiroshima” plan that he intends to carry out in the very near future. Once bin Laden gives the signal, his henchmen will proceed to detonate their explosives in a number of separate U.S. cities, leaving them in irreparable ruins and killing tens of millions of people in the process.

In other words, while the Left, ever since 9/11, has argued passionately against sealing the southern U.S. border on grounds that such an initiative would constitute “racism,” “xenophobia,” a violation of “human rights,” a repudiation of “American values,” and a “threat to the environment,” bin Laden has quietly and happily exploited our national insanity and set the stage, from his cave somewhere in the remote mountains of Pakistan, for the cataclysmic end of the most powerful nation in world history.

If bin Laden indeed has been able to set in motion this nightmare scenario, he succeeded for one very simple reason: America’s military might has been offset by a weakness of spirit that has become a hallmark of the modern Western world. It is a frailty that derives entirely from the leftist worldview that has infected America over the past half-century. This view identifies Western (especially American) culture as a uniquely evil, exploitative player in the story of mankind, and depicts all acts of barbarism against the U.S. as wholly understandable reactions to American transgressions. It is a mindset that has gradually, incrementally, and inexorably made its “long march through the institutions,” -- the schools, the seminaries and churches, the media, the entertainment industry, the courts, and the political sphere -- just as the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci prescribed in the 1920s.

Gramsci understood that by poisoning the culture from within, and by so degrading and undermining the culture’s faith in itself, the American people could be compelled to believe, to their very marrow, that their heritage was in fact unworthy of defending against those who would destroy it under the banner of so-called “multiculturalism.” Gramsci and his successors were patient enough to allow this time-consuming process to unfold, knowing that the American way of life could be bled to death ever-so-slowly, almost imperceptibly, without the firing of a single shot until the time was just right. The fact that the person who ultimately may fire that shot is a seventh-century-style savage whose fanatical “religious” worldview bears no resemblance whatsoever to the ideals of Gramsci and his fellow Marxists, is not as strange as one might think. As bin Laden himself declared in a fatwa issued on Al-Jazeera Television just before American and British troops entered Iraq in March 2003: “The interests of Muslims and the interests of the socialists coincide in the war against the crusaders.”

Given that bin Laden’s agents of nuclear holocaust apparently were smuggled into our country by way of the Mexican border, it is worth recalling what some of the luminaries of the Left have had to say, in recent years, vis a vis defending that border by means of increased surveillance and the construction of a fence to repel illegal invaders:

      American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): Former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser attributes the concerns that many Americans have about illegal immigration to a “wave of anti-immigrant hysteria.” Wade Henderson of the ACLU’s Washington, DC office claims that the desire to regulate immigration can be traced directly to “hostility motivated by nativism, racism, and red scare.” In May 2008, the ACLU produced a tearjerker advertisement lamenting how a fence somewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border had ruined Mother’s Day for a Mexican woman and her daughter by keeping them apart.

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC):  Viewing the United States as the world’s primary agent of evil and exploitation, this group has posted on its website a detailed list of strategies by which illegal aliens -- in the event that they are interrogated, detained, or arrested -- can avoid cooperating with immigration authorities or police. According to AFSC, a border fence would “disrupt” area residents’ “way of life” and “has never proven to be a long-term, practical solution to the immigration dilemma.” The organization further contends that such a fence would constitute “a form of violence to the environment” because “it is expected to cause irreversible damage to the Tijuana River Estuary environs as well as cause erosion and flooding in Tijuana.”

Border Action Network (BAN): This neo-Marxist group seeks “to ensure that those who are most impacted [i.e., illegal aliens] by border and immigration policies are at the forefront of movements calling for human dignity and civil rights …” Advocating the dissolution of American borders, BAN calls for unchecked, unregulated migration into and out of the United States. The organization has filed lawsuits against what it calls “an ugly movement of armed, militia-style civilian groups” and “anti-immigrant, white supremacist groups” -- such as American Border Patrol and Ranch Rescue -- for their practice of detaining illegal aliens and calling government border agents to arrest them. BAN co-director Jennifer Allen said in 2002: “They [illegal immigrants] have civil rights and human rights that take precedence over defending the country.” Former BAN spokesman Chris Ford, for his part, expresses concern that “this [fence] plan will cause massive environmental destruction” affecting in particular the Sonoran Pronghorn, an animal that resembles an antelope and is considered an “endangered species.”

National Council of Churches (NCC): A longtime enemy of the United States, NCC in the 1950s and 1960s, under the rubric of charity, provided financial assistance to the communist regimes in Yugoslavia and Poland. In the 1970s it helped finance Soviet-sponsored guerrilla incursions into Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, and Angola. In the 1980s it contributed large sums of money to the Marxist Sandinista Party in Nicaragua and communist guerrillas in El Salvador. Moreover, the organization has supported Fidel Castro’s (and now his successor’s) regime in Cuba for decades.

In April 2008, NCC co-signed an interfaith letter to Congress expressing “grave concern over the environmental destruction currently occurring in the U.S.-Mexico border region” as a result of the “hasty construction of hundreds of miles of fencing along the border.” “The current path of the border fence,” NCC explained, “cuts through places like Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, home to over 500 species of plants, 50 species of mammals, and nearly 300 species of birds. Construction of the fence is severing migration routes and destroying thousands of acres of wildlife habitat. In Arizona alone, 39 species protected or proposed to be protected under the Endangered Species Act are being adversely affected by Border Patrol activities, including construction of the fence….”

Defenders of Wildlife (DOW): This environmentalist group has warned that the erection of a border fence will have “serious and lasting” effects on the region’s wildlife, water, and air. According to DOW associate Jenny Neeley, such a fence will significantly impact biological diversity along the border by preventing desert animals from moving around freely. “Right now,” she says, “on the U.S.-Mexico border there are 47 endangered species, including the jaguar, the ocelot, the lesser long nosed bat and numerous bird species.” Neeley further complains that the bright lights used by border patrol officers during overnight hours can cause great harm to “nocturnal animals.”

National Council of La Raza (NCLR): This organization favors amnesty for illegals already residing in the U.S., and open borders henceforth. In NCLR’s calculus, any restriction on the free movement of immigrants constitutes a violation of their civil liberties, and any reduction in government assistance to illegal border-crossers is “a disgrace to American values.” Thus NCLR supports continued mass Mexican immigration to the United States, and hopes to achieve, by the sheer weight of numbers, the re-partition of the American Southwest as a new state called “Aztlan” -- to be controlled by its alleged rightful owners, the people and government of Mexico. In October 2006, NCLR President and CEO Janet Murguía said that the prospect of a border fence “doesn’t solve the immigration issue, it makes it worse.”

Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF): Over the course of its 40-year history, MALDEF has undertaken numerous legal campaigns to abet the cause of illegal immigration. In 1994, for example, the organization condemned Operation Gatekeeper, a U.S. government program intended to restore integrity to a particularly porous stretch of the California-Mexico border. Claiming that this initiative was callously “diverting” illegal border-crossers “from California to the harsh and dangerous Arizona desert,” MALDEF charged that Americans opposing unrestricted immigration were motivated largely by “racism and xenophobia.”

In 2006 MALDEF’s Interim President and General Counsel John Trasviña called the prospective border fence “a travesty” that “will take years to complete and does nothing to address America’s immigration or labor needs.” An official MALDEF statement said that such a fence would “make illegal crossings more deadly and dangerous” and would cause hardship for “American families who want to be reunited with loved ones.”

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC): In December 2005 LULAC created a website titled “WeAreRacists.com,” which portrayed the Minuteman Project -- a nonviolent organization of U.S. citizens who alert the Border Patrol to the presence of unauthorized border-crossers in the American Southwest -- as “an anti-immigrant group” composed of “racists, cowards, un-Americans (sic), vigilantes, [and] domestic terrorists” who are “often affiliated with white supremacy groups.”

LULAC opposes border-patrol policies that would authorize the U.S. military to prevent illegal immigration, on grounds that “military personnel are not trained for border patrolling and might easily violate the civil rights of those they intervene with.” José Velez, who headed the League from 1990 to 1994, has said that the U.S. Border Patrol is “the enemy of my people and always will be.” In 2006 LULAC National President Hector. M. Flores condemned the prospective security fence as “an affront to immigrant communities [that] will create a permanent scar in the relationship between the United States and our southern neighbors.” “Building a ‘Berlin’ style wall between ourselves and our neighbor,” he added, “is un-American, undemocratic, and unacceptable in a free society.

Democrats: In April 2008, fourteen House Democrats, including eight committee chairmen, said they would file a brief supporting a legal challenge to the Bush administration’s plans to finish erecting nearly 500 miles of fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of the year. Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said, “Our responsibility to be stewards of the earth cannot be thrown aside for the sake of an ill-conceived border fence.”
If indeed Osama bin Laden’s nuclear holocaust looms just over the horizon, life as we have known it in this country will soon be gone forever. All that remains to be seen is how far the Islamists will go to humiliate and degrade us before striking their lethal blows. And we can trace this awful fate directly to the imbecilic, catastrophic policies of organizations and individuals like those listed above. While they have lectured us on stupidities like the “rights” of “undocumented” border-crossers and the plight of “endangered” long-nosed bats, our enemies were not nearly as timid as we were.

What distinguishes a large proportion of the American population from bin Laden's Islamists goes far beyond the genocidal ambitions of the latter. The most vital distinction is that the Islamists believe, with every fiber of their being, in the legitimacy (indeed, the supremacy) of their culture and the nobility of their mission. Nothing can deter them from their single-minded quest to conquer and murder in the name of Allah.

By contrast, many tens of millions of Americans have been conditioned, by decades of leftist assaults on the legitimacy of their history and traditions, to doubt that those traditions even merit a stiff defense. Only in such a culture would so many people -- from anonymous men and women on any street corner to the occupant of the Oval Office -- be so preoccupied with reiterating, ad nauseam, the notion that authentic Islam is, at its essence, a “religion of peace” that unfortunately was “hijacked” by a “small minority of extremists.” Only in such a culture would it be widely understood, as it is in America, that any deviation from these absurd talking points opens one up to charges of “Islamophobia” and “bigotry.”

Thus Americans have voluntarily placed themselves in a rhetorical and ideological straight jacket, fearing to admit that they can even perceive the plain reality that Islam’s predominant teachings and emphases -- as set forth in the trilogy consisting of the Koran, the Hadith, and the Sira -- differ greatly from those of Western religious traditions.

Their fear of stating this simple, inarguable truth closely parallels their fear of demanding that our nation strengthen its border security to the point where illegal entry is made impossible -- lest they be smeared as “racists” and “nativists” who are unconcerned with the “dignity” and the “common humanity” of “impoverished undocumented workers,” blah, blah, blah.

This type of trembling population -- echoing dutifully the cacophony of empty platitudes uttered by all manner of America-hating, know-nothing leftists in the political arena, in the media, in the pulpit, and in the university classroom -- have provided Osama bin Laden with more than enough assurance that he is facing an enemy ripe for slaughter on a scale never before seen.

[Soldier4Christ]

Does Osama bin Laden possess nuclear weapons? Has he smuggled these weapons into the United States? Does he have a plan to detonate these weapons in multiple American cities if Israel attacks Iran's nuclear facilities? Dr. Hugh Cort, President of the American Foundation for Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research, believes the answer to all of these questions is yes.

Cort has assembled a body of evidence which he claims supports the view that bin Laden has a plan for an "American Hiroshima" which will be implemented in the near future. He has sent this material to various U.S. officials, including Robert S. Mueller III, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Cort believes that the government is not doing enough to prevent an attack.

Much of his evidence centers around one Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist who has conducted the only interview of bin Laden after 9/11. Bin Laden told Mir that he had acquired 20 suitcase nuclear bombs from the former Soviet Union. Mir told Cort that bin Laden's men have smuggled these bombs into the United States. His men supposedly are waiting for bin Laden to give them the signal, then seven to ten American cities will be struck. If true it is little wonder that Iran's leader confidently predicts that the United States will be bombed back to the Stone Age.

Bin Laden supposedly has fulfilled Islamic law by warning the United States that an attack is coming and offering a truce - convert to Islam and you will not be attacked. Refusal to convert to Islam means that an attack against America is justified. Three weeks prior to 9/11 bin Laden warned that the United States would be attacked in an unprecedented way for its support of Israel.

Already bin Laden has called for all Muslims in the United States to leave. Instead of a mass exodus of Muslims from this country, new mosques are opening every few weeks. Muslim schools also are being established, which suggests that families plan to stay here for the foreseeable future. But Yossef Bodansky, director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism from 1988 to 1998, has testified that bin Laden has obtained nuclear weapons. He told Congress that "Osama has recruited former Soviet Special Forces (SPETSNAZ) soldiers to teach al Qaeda how to maintain and operate the bombs."

Mir, by the way, has suggested that most of the nuclear weapons have been smuggled across the border from Mexico. Opponents of illegal immigration long have argued that they want the border monitored and closed for national security purposes. Proponents of illegal immigration have maintained that opposition to it is "racist." Clearly, opponents of illegal immigration have the better case, although if Mir is correct, the door may have been open too long. Christopher Ruddy, editor of Newsmax, interviewed Mueller, who told him that he is very concerned about bin Laden having nuclear weapons in the United States, so concerned that the FBI has surrounded mosques in ten American cities with nuclear radiation detectors. Cort quotes Steve Coll, President of New America Foundation, as stating that these detectors cannot sense enriched uranium when it is shielded in lead. If Islamists have such bombs, no doubt they are wrapped in lead.

Cort says that Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff does not have a plan in the event that these bombs are detonated. In such a scenario real deaths will come from radiation. If people know how to avoid radiation prior to an attack, there may be many survivors. If people can devise a radiation-proof shelter in their own homes to survive a detonation, two days later radiation is one, one-hundredth the strength of the initial blast. If people can spend three days in the shelter and then only make brief trips outside once a day, they can defeat radiation. But what credible source has warned people of the potential threat and how they can meet it?

Is all of this just alarmist talk? Has Cort missed something important which would nullify his answers? I have no idea. It seems more than reasonable that we proceed as if it is true. If it proves to be a false alarm, what have we lost? But if Cort's research has merit and we are prepared to handle such a situation, we could minimize its terrible impact. When I asked some U.S. officials why no one in the government is warning people, I was told "we don't want to unduly alarm people." Nonsense. I have great faith that the American people will do the right thing if properly informed. We did in the mid-1950s when told that the Soviet Union could start a nuclear war. We can do so again, but someone with credibility must tell Americans the truth.

[HisDaughter]

God help us all.  That's all I can say that I haven't already said concerning the idiotic neglect of our sworn protectors and servants.  Thay have all gotten rich and concerned themselves with only themselves and have not once listened to what the AMERICAN people have had to say.  Earplugs and blinders and hard hearts unless it concerns their quality of living directly, I'm sure.  The american people might just as well be living on another planet, for all DC cares.  They are so out of touch with us and dont' care to be in touch.
Come on Lord Jesus!  We are waiting.

[Soldier4Christ]

Amen!

What is the most prime target in the U.S. that would cause the biggest amount of confusion and as for bringing the U.S. to it's knees?

Our politicians have not thought this out for their own safety either. They are to secure in their ways to see the situation clearly.

[HisDaughter]

I can think of several places, DC is probably at the top.  Then there is Boeing, the ship yards, NASA etc.

[Soldier4Christ]

I would put the White House, Congress then the power grid.